


Top Hats And Borrowed Taps

by AxolotlLumberjack



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 30s music, Alternate Universe, And a tree branch, Ballet studios, Dancing, F/F, Fluff, a hat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:48:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26377561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxolotlLumberjack/pseuds/AxolotlLumberjack
Summary: Lena was used to being the last one there, steps echoing in the empty hallways, fluorescent tubes buzzing quietly overhead.  Today, however, as she turned a corner she noticed someone slip into one of the smaller studios.  She frowned and stopped at the door, peering in through the long rectangular window.OrLena finds Kara in a dance studio after her ballet class one day.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 9
Kudos: 192





	Top Hats And Borrowed Taps

**Author's Note:**

> Kara’s video no. 1 - https://vimeo.com/31922652 (skip to 1.30)
> 
> Kara’s video no. 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxPgplMujzQ 
> 
> (You don’t have to watch them but it might help you visualise what’s happening.)

Lena pushed through the studio door and out into the corridor, bag slung over her shoulder. The neat bun her hair was in was beginning to give her a headache and her feet hurt from practicing ballet en point for too long. She knew her mother would accept no less, though, and so always stayed behind long after class.

She was used to being the last one there, steps echoing in the empty hallways, fluorescent tubes buzzing quietly overhead. Today, however, as she turned a corner she noticed someone slip into one of the smaller studios. She frowned and stopped at the door, peering in through the long rectangular window. 

At first she couldn’t see anything odd. The room was like all the others - wooden floorboards, three cream walls and one lined with mirrors with a ballet bar across the front. There was a table in the left corner with a laptop hooked up to the sound system. More tables lined the wall by the door and the wall to the right was partially hidden by stacks of chairs. She was about to leave when blonde curls bounced past the window with a sound like a galloping horse and almost gave her a heart attack.

The girl went over to the laptop and started a video playing of a man in a top hat and tails, holding a cane. She took a few steps back, put on a baseball cap and picked up a stick she must have found in the park. Lena watched as she matched the man in the video step for step, mirroring each of his movements perfectly, each tap of her shoes and stick completely in time with his.

She watched, mesmerised, for a few minutes but the girl turned around as she danced and stopped short when she saw Lena, clutching her piece of tree to her chest. Lena panicked and ran off down the corridor, bursting through the doors of the old building and down the steps to where her driver was waiting to take her back to Luthor Manor.

———

Alex was in the kitchen when Kara got back. She raised an eyebrow when she saw her come in.

“And where have you been?”

Kara adjusted the straps of her rucksack on her shoulders and continued towards the stairs. “The library.”

Alex looked suspicious but didn’t say anything.

Kara dropped her bag to the floor and slumped back against her bedroom door with a sigh. She rubbed a hand over her face under her glasses. She could only hope Eliza didn’t get a phone call from the dance center telling her she’d been caught trespassing.

Kara made her way over to her bed and flopped down, thinking of green eyes and black hair whipping out behind the girl as she fled. How could she have let herself get caught? She thought all the dance classes had finished hours earlier.

She pulled back the covers and curled up under them, not bothering to change into pyjamas. So much for dancing.

———

The next time Lena was at the studio, she spent a little longer taking off her shoes and packing up before she left. She peered into all the rooms on the way out but there were no blonde curls and Fred Astaire.

The next time she caught a glimpse of the girl was a few weeks later. Lena was looking down at her feet, lost in her thoughts as she turned that same corner. She looked up and stopped. There, at the other end of the corridor was the girl, standing frozen and staring back.

The girl glanced around before making her way towards Lena. Lena twisted the strap of her bag anxiously. She was a little shorter than her and so she had to look up into those curious blue eyes.

The girl adjusted her glasses and bit her lip. “You didn’t tell anyone.”

Lena swallowed. “What?”

“You didn’t tell anyone that I’m clearly not supposed to be here.”

Lena shrugged. “Why are you here?”

The girl scuffed her shoe on the linoleum. “Eliza can’t pay for me to have lessons but I don’t have my own tap shoes so I sneak in here after the classes to borrow the spare ones.”

Lena glanced around. “Who’s Eliza?”

She rocked on her toes. “My mom. But I’m adopted.”

Lena pulled her lips into her mouth and nodded. “Me too.”

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. The girl puffed her cheeks up before slowly blowing the air out of them. A light flickered above them.

“Do you want to see my dance?”

“Okay.”

She smiled and Lena followed her back to the tap studio. She looked over her shoulder at Lena as she pushed through the door. “I’m Kara, by the way.”

“Lena.”

Kara disappeared into a closet and Lena looked around before hopping up onto a table by the wall. She swung her legs and waited for her to return.

Kara clipped across the floor in her borrowed pair of little black shoes, swinging her branch beside her, baseball cap hanging out the pocket of her hoodie. She went over to the laptop and started up the video. She grinned at Lena as she walked back to the center of the room, pulling the baseball cap onto her head.

Lena was once again enraptured by the way she hit every beat, flinging her hoodie out behind her like suit tails, flipping and catching her stick in an impressive show of hand-eye coordination. 

The click of her shoes and the snap of the stick on the floor created a undeniably compelling rhythm and Lena found herself grinning along with Kara as she danced.

By the time the song was finished, Kara was breathing heavily and beaming at Lena. 

Lena applauded and jumped off the table. “That was incredible. You’ve really never had lessons?”

She shook her head. 

Lena looked at her in wonder. 

Kara went and jumped up to sit on the same table Lena had been on. “Your turn.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Oh no- I-”

Kara frowned. “Don’t you dance?”

Lena opened and closed her mouth a few times before speaking. “Well, yes but I don’t have any routines prepared at the moment or anything.”

Kara smiled and swung her legs. “That’s okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Can you do those spinny things?”

Lena frowned. “Pirouettes?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know all the fancy words.”

Lena smiled and spun a few times on one foot before doing a different kind of spin across the room. 

Kara clapped. “Ooo! Will you teach me?”

Lena nodded. “But only if you show me tap.”

Lena snuck up to her room about an hour and a half later than normal that day. Luckily, Lillian didn’t seem to have noticed her absence.

———

Kara saw Lena more often after that, and every time she did, she dragged her, grinning, into the studio to watch her dance. Kara always went home with a smile on her face after Lena had been cheering her on and laughing at her antics. Sometimes she managed to get Lena to dance for her too. She loved watching Lena dance. The graceful lines she made with her movements were impossible to look away from, their confidence and precision juxtaposing her usual reserved demeanour. It felt like being allowed to glimpse beyond the walls she seemed to have constructed around herself.

On a day that Lena hadn’t been waiting at the end of the corridor, she found something in the closet. As she knelt to grab a pair of tap shoes from the plastic box of them on the floor, she noticed a yellow post-it note with a looping ‘- L’ written on it. It was stuck to a black wool felt top hat with satin lining. Next to it was a smooth, polished wooden cane. 

Kara grinned and pulled off her converse, not bothering to undo the laces, and slipped on a pair of tap shoes. She grabbed the hat and cane and made her way back into the studio. Her movements felt sharper and sleeker and she revelled in her newfound sauve-gentleman-of-the-30s-ness.

The next time she saw Lena, she ran down the corridor and flung her arms around her, almost barrelling the smaller girl over. Lena looked slightly shell-shocked when Kara pulled back, beaming and bouncing on her toes. She grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall and into the tap studio.

Once they were inside Kara hugged her again, jumping up and down and squealing “thank you thank you thank you!”

Lena returned her hug and laughed.

Kara pulled back and put her hands on Lena’s shoulders, steering her over to the table to sit and then rushed off into the closet. She came back grinning in tap shoes with her top hat on her head and cane swinging beside her.

She did a little spin and flicked her hoodie out behind herself dramatically. “What do you think?”

Lena nodded in faux seriousness. “Very dapper.”

Kara beamed and rushed over to start her video. It was the same routine as always but her movements had become more graceful as she spent more time watching Lena and she had started to not just copy the movements but make them her own.

She ended with a flourish and a wink at Lena. Lena laughed and ducked her head, swinging her legs. 

Kara came and hopped up onto the table next to her, bumping their shoulders playfully. “So am I the next Fred Astaire?” She smirked.

Lena rolled her eyes. “It’s good to see my compliments haven’t gone to your head.”

Kara laughed and pushed Lena. She fell off the table with a squeak, making them both double over with laughter. 

Kara jumped off the table and stuck her hands out to pull Lena up. Lena swatted her shoulder and they grinned at each other.

“Oh!” Kara rushed over to the laptop and got up a new video. She showed it to Lena, grinning the whole time. It was another old video, this time in black and white with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers whirling across the screen. 

When the video ended, she turned to Lena with an expectant look.

Lena nodded. “It’s very impressive.”

She huffed. “No, silly. Will you learn it with me?”

Lena’s eyebrows shot up. “What? I can’t do that!”

Kara laughed. “Well neither can I. Yet. That’s why we’d be learning it.”

“But…” Lena looked back at the screen. “But that’s not even my kind of dancing.”

Kara rolled her eyes. She restarted the video and dragged Lena into the middle of the room. She watched the video, trying to copy the moves with varying success. 

“Come on, Lena. It’s fun. You don’t have to get it perfect.”

Lena reluctantly joined in but Kara’s energy was infectious and soon they were jumping around the room, laughing and hitting approximately none of the steps.

When the song finished, they flopped against each other, shaking with laughter and trying to catch their breath. Eventually their laughter died down and they stood gazing at each other in a loose dancing hold. Lena’s eyes were so green today.

The door to the studio banged open and they sprung apart. A woman in a formal business suit with greying hair pulled back into a severe bun was standing in the doorway looking livid. Lena’s walls were immediately back up.

“This is the reason you’ve been home so late recently, Lena?” Her voice was deadly low. “Get your bag. We’re leaving.”

Lena silently went to get her bag from by the table.

The woman turned her stare to Kara and looked her up and down. “I suggest you do the same since you’re clearly not supposed to be here.”

Kara swallowed and started to remove her tap shoes.

The woman left without a word and Lena followed. Kara caught her glancing back through the thin window as she stood barefoot in the middle of the room, alone.

———

Lena stared forlornly down at her feet as she made her way out of the studio. She missed seeing Kara’s blue eyes light up from down the corridor when she saw her approaching. It had been over a month since she had last seen her and so she assumed Lillian had called the center to have her banned.

She was just passing the tap room when the door swung open and a hand pulled her inside.

She blinked. “Kara?”

Blue eyes were shining back at her with excitement. 

Lena immediately pulled her into a hug and they clung to each other for a moment. 

Lena pulled back and searched Kara’s face. “What are you doing here?”

Kara grinned. “I got a scholarship.”

Lena’s eyes widened. “What?” A brilliant smile spread slowly across her face. “Kara, that’s amazing!”

She hugged her again, squeezing tightly and rocking from side to side as Kara laughed and hugged her back.

Kara sighed contentedly into her shoulder and pulled away. She went over to the laptop and started it playing the sleeping beauty waltz.

She came back to stand in front of Lena and bowed theatrically. “May I have this dance?”

Lena nodded with a smile, taking Kara’s left hand in her right and placing her other on Kara’s shoulder as Kara’s came to her waist. She waited for her to move but she just stood there.

Kara glanced around before whispering, “I don’t know how to waltz.”

Lena laughed and led her around the room in a simple dance. 1-2-3, 1-2-3.

They smiled softly at each other as they spun through the studio.

Kara looked down. “Lena, do you think your mother would let you see me again?” She looked up hopefully.

Lena bit her lip. “I think I’d do it either way.”

A smile spread slowly across Kara’s face and she ducked her head.

She looked back up and Lena, lost in her ocean blue eyes, caught them glancing down at her lips momentarily. Lena sucked in a shaky breath. They were no longer dancing, simply holding each other close. Kara swallowed, her eyes dipping back down.

“Can I kiss you?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr @axolotllumberjack :)


End file.
